With the global high rate of urbanization and the rapid loss of wild habitat land, cities are now viewed as challenging ecosystems for sustaining biotic communities and rich diversity. During the 2000s research on urban bird populations and communities focused on global patterns, as well as processes and mechanisms that lead to the two globally recognized patterns: increased overall population ...

Urban ecosystems are an increasingly dominant feature of terrestrial landscapes. While evidence that species can adapt to urban environments is accumulating, the mechanisms through which urbanization imposes natural selection on populations are poorly understood. The identification of adaptive phenotypic changes (i.e. clines) along urbanization gradients would facilitate our understanding of th...

www.frontiersinecology.org © The Ecological Society of America I proposing the ecosystem as an organizational framework, Tansley (1935) explicitly included the effects of humans. When asking, “Is man part of ‘nature’ or not?”, Tansley concluded that “human activity finds its proper place in ecology”. Nowhere is the human–nature interface more unmistakable than in urban ecosystems, and urban eco...

Agriculture and urban activities are major sources of phosphorus and nitrogen to aquatic ecosystems. Atmospheric deposition further contributes as a source of N. These nonpoint inputs of nutrients are difficult to measure and regulate because they derive from activities dispersed over wide areas of land and are variable in time due to effects of weather. In aquatic ecosystems, these nutrients c...

Freshwater ecosystems are severely threatened by urban development and agricultural intensification. Increased occurrence of algal blooms is a main issue, and the identification of local dynamics and drivers is hampered by a lack of field data. In this study, data from 13 cities (250 water bodies) were used to examine the capacity of trained community members to assess elevated phytoplankton de...